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On the eve of the second round of legislative elections in France, and two weeks before the end of his tenure, the editor-in-chief for the French division of the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency announced his defection to a German-brewed rival-in-the-making, reported French newspaper Le Monde.

Due to step down as editor-in-chief for France and take up another position within the agency at the end of the month, Jean-Luc Testault revealed his plans on Friday to leave AFP for a new French competitor being formed by Germany’s DAPD.

Germany’s second-largest news agency, DAPD has been building up a presence in France over the past year, and is allegedly seeking to launch a French generalist, multimedia news agency under the name Sipa News in October, that would compete directly with AFP, according to Le Monde.

Founded upon the German branch of the US news agency Associated Press(AP) and a former East German agency, and owned by businessmen Martin Vorderwülbecke and Peter Löw, DAPD began its French shopping spree with the purchase of Sipa Presse, a French photo agency, in July 2011.

“Fairfax is today announcing fundamental changes to the way we do business,” reads the memo that one of Australia’s largest media companies lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Monday, sending shockwaves through the press.

The changes, which include the elimination of 1,900 jobs over the next three years, are expected to reduce costs by $235 million over the same period, and to provide Fairfax with the flexibility to shift toward a “digital-only model if that is what is required in the future,” says the document, entitled “Fairfax of the Future.”

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Nearly 50 media outlets and media advocacy groups signed a letter on Thursday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow live news coverage inside its walls for the first time during the decision on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, reports AP via the Huffington Post. Check out The New York Times’ interactive feature on the Supreme Court decision, expected to take place later this month.

Seven judges of Britain's Supreme Court dismissed as "without merit" Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's "last attempt" at appealing against extradition to Sweden over alleged sex crimes, reports the BBC. Extradition proceedings are due to begin after a two-week grace period.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron appeared before the Leveson Inquiry today to answer questions about his relationship with the press. The Guardian has detailed coverage.

Journalism.co.uk reports that the Times has launched an “experimental Tumblr page” for its Opinion section, which will offer “a flavour of what our columnists and leader writers do,” outside of the Times’s strict paywall.

Jonathan Stray has published a piece for Nieman Lab arguing that, in the modern media environment, we need new, better models for crime reporting. Stray has also led a Twitter discussion about how journalists can cover crime, and has collected the results together in a Storify at the bottom of the article.

The Guardian’s Roy Greensladereports that ELLE is planning to produce an issue edited entirely by interns. The magazine launched a competition two weeks ago to find young people to fill 10 editorial roles for its October edition, and has received just under 400 applications, writes Greenslade.

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MediaStorm, an online documentary multimedia producer that used to offer its content for free, has launched a "Pay Per Story" model. While unveiling two new films (A Shadow Remains and Rite of Passage) Executive Producer Brian Storm explains why the site is now charging $1.99 for access to a story.

At the intersection of “the side of light in the newsroom” and the “more lucrative shadowland of PR,” Press Gazette guest poster Martin MacConnol, CEO of content marketing agency Wardour, urges journalists to consider a sector in growth.

With the release of Apple’s iOS 6 update, anticipated later this year, the lives of Mac-using on-the-go bloggers will improve; the update will allow users to upload media to WordPress blogs from their iPhones, iPads or iPod touches. “For bloggers and image sharers, the tiny upgrade is a game changer,” says Matt Brian of The Next Web.

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The Guardian correspondent in Athens, Jon Henley,reports that former journalists from Greece’s second-largest paper Eleftherotypia – which, due to lack of money, has only published two editions since December last year – are returning to work unpaid to put out third special edition of the paper, which will be published the day before the country’s general election. Henley writes that this could well be the paper’s final edition, and notes that former Eleftherotypia journalists have not been paid since August 2011.

AFP writes that former British prime minister John Major has directly contradicted Rupert Murdoch’s assertion before the Leveson Inquiry that he had "never asked a prime minister for anything." John Major told the inquiry today that, during a dinner in 1997, Murdoch had demanded Major change his policy on Europe, reports AFP.

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In the digital age it makes sense for English-language news brands to focus on expanding their global audience: English as an international language is growing, print audiences in Europe and North American are declining, and digital technology makes is relatively cheap to publish in a foreign market (at least compared to the cost of printing costly international editions). All good reasons to try to grow your international readership.

As Nieman Lab pointed out in an article published earlier this week, The New York Times is a brand that is already “an established worldwide player.” However, the article suggests that the paper is still “trying to figure out its place in the international mediascape.” One small part of this process is the paper’s new India Ink blog.

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Renowned newspaper designer Mario Garciaprofiles a new African tablet computer named Way C – meaning “light of the starts.” The device has been designed by a young entrepreneur named Vérone Mankou, whose company VMK is based in Brazzaville, Congo.

The Economist asks whether non-profit-funded journalism will be enough to make up for a decline in the commercial news industry in this thoughtful article.

In a new blog post, the editor of data and innovation at Thompson Reuters, Reg Chua, takes a step back from the heated debate around the merits of paywalls vs. free online content and addresses some broader issues about how news should be funded.

Felix Salmon, also at Reuters, has written a blog post about the merits of syndicating blog content. There can be real benefits for bloggers, he argues, but the attitude to syndication may be poisoned if there is not enough communication between those on the editorial side and business/sales staff.

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Are you what Jake Levine of News.me calls a “sadistic news consumer”? The Nieman Lab'sAndrew Phelps, who has had to upgrade the RAM in his iMac to handle all of Chrome’s open tabs, writes about the virtues of less, not more.

The rapidly expanding newyorker.com has just recruited former Wired contributing editor Jonah Lehrer, and “there’s more stuff planned.” Capital New York's Joe Pompeo interviews Nicholas Thompson, digital editor of The New Yorker.

Charge more, print less - Reuters opinion columnist Jack Shafer on the liquidation and watering down of newspapers.

Journalists at Associated Press vote “overwhelmingly” for strike action in response to end of final salary pension scheme, reports the Press Gazette’s Andrew Pugh.